Welcome to my blog on climate change. I have been analyzing climate data for several years trying to determine how much the burning of fossil fuel contributes to observed environmental changes that we call climate. I will post the results of my analysis and hope that those of you that are qualified to do a “peer review” will point out any errors I may have made, and suggest improvements. You are welcome to replicate or improve on the techniques I use applying them to any available data and submit it for publication. I stopped writing for publication over 20 years ago when I retired.

14 Responses to Hello world!

Dr.Haynie, I found my way here from your post on WUWT. I have downloaded your paper from kidswin.com and did a quick key sentence read and will go back and re-read after I finish Donna LaF.’s Delinquent Teenager.

I have not seen your name at Climate Audit which surprised me after my quick scan of your work. It seems to be a site in which you would find a number of kindred folks and where you could add value to the conversation.

Eric,
I haven’t written for publication for years. I put these on the internet hoping for “peer reviews” and that someone in the “publish or perish” world would use similar techniques to replicate my results and submit for publication. Most comments I have received have been favorable and none have gone into any detail that I would expect in a “peer review”. I do not have a PhD. I was working on one and doing research at Georgia Tech when I was recalled to active duty in the navy. I have masters degrees in chemical engineering from Auburn and metallurgical engineering from Ohio State. I did research at the Naval Air Materials Center and did additional graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania while I was there. I went from there to Battelle Memorial Institute. Four years later I was hired as a branch chief in the Economics Effects Division of National Air Pollution Control Administration which merged into the newly formed EPA. With the reorganization, I ended up in Atmospheric Sciences Researh Laboratory were I did and directed research for over 20 years. I ended up publishing an average of about three authored or coauthored papers per year. Also, I authored several chapters in Air Quality Criteria Documents. I have never had a paper rejected and only few required some revision. I spent three months at the USC School of Public Administration’s Environmental Management Institute. That’s my background. Like you, I have grand children that I hope to leave a good future. One recently graduated with a masters degree in international relations from Seaton Hall. She has a big student loan and can’t find a job. Also, I have a great grandson with another on the way.

I am still analyzing data doing mass and energy balances and will gladly share what I am doing. I was hoping that with your qualifications, you could give me a good peer review and possibly replicate my work. If you google “Fred H. Haynie” you can find some of my publications among a lot of blog comments.

Dr. Haynie, I have only glanced so far at the extensive work you have done on the subject of climate change. Upon doing so, I immediately wondered if some of it has as yet been subjected to the usual peer review processes and, if so, what specific critisms, if any, have been expressed so far. In any case, I will study it further and try to comprehend it in all of its considerable detail. Some of your explanations are, indeed, quite new to me. Eric

Fred, I noted that you have both a background in Chemistry and Climate Analysis. My name is John Owens and I post on WUWT under the name of Retired Engineer John. I wanted to bring to your attention the current WUWT chart on Sea Salt. It is at this URL http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycom1-12/navo/globalsss_nowcast_anim30d.gif
The reason that I am flagging this chart, is that it appears that the reduced level of salt off the South American coast, just North of the equator, has to be caused by freezing of the Sea Water in this local area. For sea water to freeze at the equator, about the only thing that would do this is a chemical reaction. The direct formation of calcium carbonate without the benefit of photosynthesis, or the hydration of calcium carbonate or methane are possibilities. I am a retired electrical engineer and my knowledge of chemistry is limited; however, I would like to discuss this subject further. If you are interested, please e-mail me. Please note your subject clearly as I get a lot of mail that I delete.

Upwelling off the West coast of South America probably is the largest source of natural CO2 emissions. Add to that the convergence of the undersurface Cromwell current, the Humbolt current, and the Panama current.

I don’t know. Seems to me that cold water rising to the surface ought to release CO2. But that depends on its source, and I don’t know what it is. Warm water seen offshore Peru and Ecuador during El Niño isn’t likely to release CO2, because it cools down as it travels from the East. However, I don’t think you’ll see water freeze offshore Ecuador. It’s way too warm.

Fred, at first reading I found your pdf interesting ( though I’d prefer a sober presentation yellow on blue is hard work ). I would prefer to see it presented in a more readable form like you have here.

I think the whole question of what proportion of emission gets absorbed and the out-gassing question have not been adequately examined and are based on some fairly gross assumptions that happen to fit preconceived ideas.

However, if you want some peer-review, here are a few things I think need looking at:

1) Over-fitting. four harmonics plus linear is 4*3+2=14 free parameters. That’s a _lot_. Also R^2 values like 0.998 are often a sign of over-fitting.

2) R^2 is not the definitive test of a good fit. Just adding more parameters will always increase this statistic. That does not mean the result is necessarily ‘better’. At some stage you are just fitting noise and degrading the model.
2b) You should always look at the residuals when doing a regression, not just R^2

3) You make several claims about results being “statistically significant” without saying what criteria you are using to make that judgement. Nothing is black and white in statistics, you need to say what you are doing and why.

4) You make several statements that are just assertions and you don’t seem to give any real reasons or what you base conclusions on. eg

a) it’s not even clear what you have in mind here. b) what evidence do you have for this?

I think this latitude variation may contain very important information about the nature of what is going on. The fact that is increases to very high latitudes seems to go against the orthodox idea that it is primarily NH vegetation. Work I have done suggests a strong absorption / out-gassing component that is being played down / ignored.

5) There is a gap in the Scripts sampling locations. There does not seem to be anything in equatorial Indian Ocean. I think this is one of the main out-gassing regions. There is a Scripps ‘cruise’ that goes through this area and it is a major up-welling of deep currents into a very warm region. AFAICT, Arctic and Indian are the main source and sink points.

6) Please number your graphs. It is essential for quickly and unambiguously referring to them.

7) It seems that you are doing some manual parameter tweaking to maximise R^2, why are you not using classical least squares regression? Under the usually simplifying assumptions that is the “best unbiased linear estimation “.

8) The 308y cycle is interesting if it is consistently coming out of different data. You say it fits better than the usual exponential. This needs to be shown explicitly. Nulus in verba , an’ all that.

I think this represents a relaxation response: initial change is orthogonal (d/dt) final change is in phase. There’s a sliding scale in between which is shown by reducing amplitude at longer time scales. This needs to be fitted and a ( or several ) time constants derived. This does not relate to what you have written but you may want to think about what it implies and how you are currently interpreting things.

10) I can see some logic in the ice area argument but I get the impression you are over selling it. Again, I’d like to see more detailed justification. Some attempt at comparing to a null hypothesis that it is not the key driver would be appropriate. As you are currently presenting it, it comes over a bit like a pet theory that is being helped by confirmation bias.

I would repeat that I think there may be a good degree of truth in the idea, it’s the presentation of the evidence that is lacking.

12) Re. exponential rise in CO2. In fact the 150 year history can not be simply fitted by one exp. Three are three distinct periods of growth. I did a fit but can’t find it right now. IIRC, the initial period was the strongest growth factor (but small in magnitude), a second period in earlier 20th with lower exponential rise (though larger annual values); and a post 1960 period with strong growth exponential . The first two had the same baseline circa 280-290 ppmv, the final one had a notably lower baseline, so there’s no way to fit this accurately with one exponential.

I think these are related to different levels of economic growth. The three exp fit I did was to CDIAC emission data , not atmospheric CO2, which does not have data that far back.

OK, I’ll leave it there until I see if this is the sort of thing you want.

I think you may have some important results especially the latitude variations and changing profiles. This looks significant. I hope my suggestions will help you present it in a way that will be accepted as a more rigorous proof.

“This residence time can be estimated by adjusting the emissions time scale to maximize R^2 in a regression (match up perturbations). The best fit regression of atmospheric CO2 on the latitude function and anthropogenic emissions is found at a mean environmental residence time of 9.8 years. That is like saying that emissions this year will show up as an atmospheric increase in around 9.8 years. The coefficients for the best fit are given in the following table.”

You appear to be just shifting the data here. This is not correct. You need to do a “convolution” with the exponential decay that you think matches. Here is a script to do it. AWK is available on all major platforms. It needs to be run form a command line, with a text file of the data and a time-constant parameter.

“I think the whole question of what proportion of emission gets absorbed and the out-gassing question have not been adequately examined and are based on some fairly gross assumptions that happen to fit preconceived ideas.”

I just realised that could be misread. What I meant was this has up until now not been adequately examined and you are doing a good job digging into it. I think you are on the right lines but need to be more formal about how you present what you’ve done, otherwise it will be too easily rejected.

I hope the rest of the comments were pertinent. I presume you want sceptical, critical review , not pat on the back pal-review.

I’m having a new look at the CO2 data to see if I can verify some of what you’ve done.